Bittersweet Salvation
by xBettingOnTheVampiresx
Summary: Here's a one shot about the process in which Carlisle had to go through to change Edward.I added a twist that involves him accidentally falling in love with Edward's mother. It's my best work if I must brag. I warn you, it gets depressing and dark. Enjoy!


**Bittersweet Salvation**

**Chapter:1**

What a poor and unfortunate place to be when one is so young. Not the slightest chance of hope in a region as dark as this. The feel of uncleanliness lingers in the air. You inhale it as you breathe and know that one day, you will be a part of the death and suffering. The sweat pours from them, coating their bodies in a sheen of clear residue. The doctors eventually tire and have to flee out of the rooms of the dying. All including the infamous Dr. Cullen. He has no need, though. The guilt rolls off of his back and on to the floor every time he has to walk out of those doors. He need not sleep, food, or any other humanly demands. He knows it, too. Yet he must go home every day to keep up the façade that he moulds his world around. The world of eternal life that he is accustomed to.

Every day, he tries to make up for the time that was lost during the hours of the night, and all of the souls that were lost as well. He goes to their beds to offer them words of comfort and false hope. Not a single one of them has ever risen out of the illness to continue to live their life. They all will die. The beautiful doctor falls deeper into his depression as each life slips between his fingers. He cannot hold on, not even with his inhuman strength. Yet he comes back day after day to this place. And day after day, more are taken. There is not a single thing that he can do to prevent these dissolutions. But he tries. He sweeps through the hospital, tending all that need help. His hands move over the patients with such speed and skill. Centuries and centuries worth, in fact. He checks their pulse, their temperature, and every other useless method of healing. He spends less than a minute with each of them. All except for one boy and his mother. He is drawn to their bodies like they are beckoning him.

Dr. Cullen usually spends more than three times as much time with them and he knows not why. Maybe it is because they have a fighting chance at life. Maybe not. He has done more to help them than anyone else. He helped the father of the boy as much as he could. The mother and son watched him slip away and there was nothing they could do about it. The mother, Elizabeth Masen, would use her excess strength to tend both her husband and son. She could have chosen life, Carlisle thought, but she valued theirs more that it ultimately would cost her own. He admired this, so maybe that was the reason for so much of his time spent watching over them. Edward, the father, went first. Dr. Cullen was there watching as the light left his eyes and his body went limp. He had tried to show Elizabeth that he had done all that he could. She just nodded her head and understood. She had no strength to cry, she knew that she had to save it to tend her son, Edward, of who she loved so very dearly. He was all that she had to live for now. For Carlisle having to see this boy thrashing in his sleep and sweating out his life, was agony for him. And still, he knew not why. He had seen plenty of other boys about his age pass and none were nearly as significant as this one. He wanted to save him. Absolutely needed to. He would spend the hours of the night at his home contemplating how he would achieve this task. He knew the obvious answer. He didn't like it, but he had been thinking of creating a companion eventually. Why not now? he would ask himself. Day after day, he would consider it and day after day, Edward's health would slip farther and farther away. He feared that one day he would come back to the hospital from a frustrating night and Edward would be gone. An errant thought went through his brain.

_ Maybe Elizabeth. She is so brave, we could…no. _

He thought,

_ She is not the one. I know it. _He concluded.

Edward would have to be the one.

He returned to the ward after and especially difficult night, to find that nothing had changed. There was still the never-ending smell of sweat and vomit that lingered in the halls. He often times wondered how the other doctors could stand to be here without falling ill. Many of them did become sickly, though. They would die like all of the rest. Dr. Cullen would stand just as strong as he had always been. Nothing could affect him.

He arrived in the early morning, as early as he could come without people getting suspicious. He treated the patients as usual and then went off to see his favorites.

Edward had been doing poorly these past few days and Carlisle had found Elizabeth bent over him, dabbing his forehead with a wet cloth. Dr. Cullen had told her that this wasn't necessary. He would always be there for them. He would take the cloth from her hands and beckon her to lay in bed. She would try to protest, but his cold hands would prevail every time. He tended the boy and found joy in the smile of his mother.

She smiled for so many reasons. One of which was not this influenza. She did smile at Dr. Cullen, though. She smiled at his handiwork and care towards her son. When he was done, sometimes he would sit with her and hold her blazing hand in his chilled one. They shared a bond that confused Dr. Cullen. He knew that it was wrong on many levels, but if it made her happy, then he would continue to form this affinity towards her. He would forget about her recent loss of her late husband. He didn't care when he was with her. The thought of his actions would repulse the hell out of him. But it didn't stop him from what he did one day. Elizabeth was in her bed, looking beautiful, even in her sickness. Carlisle acted on impulse. He strode over to her chaise as graceful as ever and leaned towards her. She was asleep, but woke when his cold hand cradled her neck and his lips melded on to hers. She wasn't as alarmed as he thought she would be. She reached her weak hand to stroke his brow and he gently pulled back. He told her he was so sorry, and he was out of line. Already, he knew that Elizabeth was suspicious of him. He often times found himself moving too quickly or being too still in front of her. Now that he had shown his immunity to the disease, she knew him to be something inhuman.

They never again talked about the incident that they had shared. They conversed about other topics such as the war that was raging. She had told him about how her son had so many dreams, such a complete future. He had wished to become a soldier and fight in Europe. WWI was what he yearned to be a part of. She had shared that she was secretly happy about this disease. She felt horribly guilty, but she knew that the army would never accept him after what the flu had done to him. She had heard of the horror stories from the other mothers and had not wanted him to be a part of it. She would have had no say once he turned eighteen. He would have been on next ship to France. But that was not possible. Now he was lying weak and broken in a hospital bed, There was nothing that anyone could do.

Dr. Cullen had gone home after a long day at the hospital, too long. He gravitated towards the small window in his apartment and opened it. He pulled up a chair and sat facing out looking over the rooftops of neighboring houses and searched the sky. He needed answers and was getting none. He thought of Elizabeth and how he wanted so badly for there to be a reasonable solution to his love for her. He wished for her to love him back, though he knew that it was impossible. It was selfish of him to believe a new widow would be able to move on to him. He gripped the windowsill and cracked it down the middle. His depression was getting the best of him. Maybe in time he would find the answers that he was looking for. But that was just the problem. There was no time at all.

He spent the remainder of the night weighing the pros and cons of doing this to the boy. Giving him immortality, but dooming him to the tortures of vampirism. He was an intelligent boy. This was one of his pros. Carlisle found that he could get along with him. But he also didn't want to unleash a monster on the city. That was a definite con. They would have to go elsewhere. Far away from the population and into the country. It was a long night. He left as he always did at four a.m. The earliest that he could get away with. He reached the hospital doors with ease, and opened them. Instantly, he could tell that something was off. He could hear whispers through that walls, they were frantic. The other doctors and nurses wouldn't make eye contact with him. He was puzzled, but then it hi him. They were either dead or on their way. He sprinted to the stairs at human speed and then accelerated to his full velocity in the stairwell. He ran down the hall and to their room, not wanting to see the truth. There were two nurses hovering over their sweating figures. A weight was lifted from Dr. Cullen's shoulders. They were alive, there was still hope. He ordered the nurses away and began to work. He observed how Edward was unconscious. His fever was at an all time high. His mother was barely there, yet she still tried to rise from her bed and tend her son. Carlisle had to push her back, and she fell on to her pillows. He knew that she was on her way out. He reached out to caress her gaunt cheek. She was looking past this world, to a far away place. He bent down and attempted to soothe her. He held her close and whispered his love to her, not making any sense. Suddenly, she grabbed onto his hand with such a force that he though that she would have enough strength to come through this. She pulled her lips tight and stared him straight in the eye. She told him to save her son. To do _everything _in his power to do it. She knew that he alone had the power to save him. Dr. Cullen of course, knew this all along. He promised that he would and she beckoned him to come closer. She put her lips next to his ear and softy uttered the words,

_ I love you, too. I'm so sorry._

Carlisle let out a dry sob and watched as she started to shiver and fall into a slumber. He sat with her in the last hour. She was gone so soon. Carlisle had little time to grieve, though. Within that same hour that he had lost his love, he had wheeled Edward out on a gurney under a sheet. He took him to the morgue. No one noticed that the boy under the sheet was still breathing because of all of the pandemonium that was always flowing in the hospital. Carlisle maneuvered the stretcher into a corner and left him there until he could make an excuse to leave.

He returned to the morgue in less than an hour later to find that Edward was still alive. He had feared that he may have been taken while he was away. The plan was for Carlisle to take him home and immediately start the process of changing him.

Dr. Cullen listened for footsteps or heartbeats in the hallways. He waited for a clear break to take the boy and run. He found that break in mere minutes. He took the boy as gently as he could, opened the door of the morgue and sprinted through the halls and out into the day. He thanked God that the sun was blanketed by the clouds. This would have been difficult any other day. Carlisle sprang up on to the nearest roof and continued to jump to every other roof top. The wind rushed past them and Edward began to moan. He was in pain, but it was nothing compared to the pain that was to come. The poor boy's eyes would flutter open and then close again. Their green coloring would soon be exchanged for a bloody crimson. This experience was bound to challenge Carlisle.

Only after a few minutes, they had reached the window of his house, and gone in. Carlisle laid Edward on his bed and hesitated. He took in a long deep breath and thought of the days events. He remembered Elizabeth's dying wish. It gave him courage to do the one thing that he always feared. He bent down to the young man's neck and inhaled. The blood was right under that delicate layer of skin which would soon be harder than the strongest steel. He pressed his lips to the skin and sank his teeth in. He felt the venom run from his mouth and into Edward's veins. He found the strength to pull back and quickly bite both of his wrists and also his ankles. Hopefully the venom would spread soon and make the boy suffer less.

The boy's reaction was just as he had expected. He writhed under the fire of the venom and screamed out. Carlisle apologized over and over again telling him that it was necessary for him to survive. He screamed out again in the ultimate pain that could have been brought on to him. Over the next three days, Edward had begged Carlisle to kill him, to end the undying pain. Carlisle had almost complied, too, but then remembered the promise that he had made to Elizabeth, lovely Elizabeth. Carlisle would keep him alive.

Carlisle sat by him the entire time, continuing to apologize and cringing every time that a shriek was let out. There was a time that Edward lay completely silent and rigid. Carlisle thought that he had passed. But his heart still beat on. He was in such pain that his body went into a coma-like state, Just when Carlisle had thought that the screaming had ceased, another round came about. He did notice that his heart was beating slower and slower, continuing to gradually slow to a stop.

When Carlisle heard the final beat, he knew that the process was complete. Edward would be a whole new person, thanks to the venom. Maybe he could even attend his mother's funeral, but then again, maybe not. He wouldn't be able to be around humans for a long time. His bloodlust would be too much for any newborn to handle. No one wants a massacre on their conscience.

Edward's body twitched with that last beat. He knew that there would be no pain, but he continued to lay as still and solid as a slab of marble. That is what he had become. A moving, thinking, killing, carved block of marble.

Carlisle waited like an eager child for Edward to open his eyes. He need to see what he had done, what he had forced this boy to become. It would make it feel more real to him. Edward's eyes snapped open, but he did not look at Carlisle, not yet. He stood up and stretched his new body. He looked around for anything that would help him see his reflection, anything at all. Carlisle gently touched his shoulder and guided him to a mirror in the next room. Edward approached it uneasily, making no sound at all. Carlisle heard an intake of breath and knew that Edward had seen. He dared to look over and saw that Edward was staring agape at himself. A pair of blood red eyes were glaring back.

**xxxxxxxxxxxxxx**

**I really hope that you liked this story! I had an interesting time writing it. I usually don't write about depressing topics, but I had to do this one. Please review and tell me what you think. I do enjoy criticizm. Thank you for taking the time! **

**~Laurel~  
**


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